West Bank

A longtime Hamas leader accused of plotting deadly attacks in Israel was killed during an exchange of gunfire Thursday after Israeli forces surrounded his West Bank home, officials said. The clash came on the same day that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas met President Barack Obama at the White House to discuss Israel's control of the West Bank and other aspects of the troubled Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Abed Majid Daodin, 45, helped plan and execute two fatal bus...

GAZA (Reuters) - The latest mini-war between Israel and the Islamist group Hamas began with the Gaza-based militants eager to strike a blow, but the escalation that followed has left them physically and diplomatically exposed, with no ready way out. Hamas has sent its rockets streaking into Israel after a month of army raids in the occupied West Bank - in search of three missing Israeli teenagers - that landed more than 900 Palestinians in jail,...

NABLUS, West Bank (Reuters) - An Israeli settler shot and wounded a Palestinian man on Saturday in a clash that began when a group of settlers set fire to fields belonging to a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank, officials said. Residents said about 25 settlers, some of them carrying guns, set fire to wheat fields in the village of Orif, which is near the northern West Bank city of Nablus. Some villagers came out to extinguish the fire and clashed with the...

The conflict between the Israeli military and its Palestinian counterparts in the Middle East is foremost on the mind of Palestinian teenager Taher, who recently arrived on Chicago's North Shore to take part in a program that seeks to help build peace and understanding between the longtime enemies. "It makes me feel not strong or not free," he said of the conflict and living in the West Bank. "But here I can see Israeli kids and talk to them and send them my...

Jaba, West Bank June 19 (Reuters) - A mosque in the village of Jaba in the occupied West Bank was vandalised and set on fire early on Tuesday, in an attack Palestinians blamed on Israeli settlers. Scrawled on the outside walls in Hebrew were the words "Ulpana War", referring to the Ulpana hill in a West Bank settlement where the Israeli government is preparing to remove five disputed apartment buildings. Around three metres of the mosque's interior wall and ...

MIAMI (Reuters) - Two South Florida public defenders were fired Tuesday after making inflammatory remarks on social media about Palestinians allegedly celebrating the abduction and murder of three Israeli teenagers in June. In one Facebook post attorney Gary Sheres wrote: "they are the filthy swine they don't eat," referring to the Muslim custom of not eating pork. "That's why the Palestinian people are considered the cockroaches of the world," lawyer...

NABLUS, West Bank, May 26 (Reuters) - A Palestinian man was shot and wounded in a clash that began when Israeli settlers set fire to fields belonging to a Palestinian village, Palestinian officials said. Residents said about 25 settlers, some of them carrying guns, set fire to wheat fields in the village of Orif, which is near the northern West Bank city of Nablus. Some villagers came out to extinguish the fire and clashed with the settlers, said Nablus official...

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel's prime minister phoned the father of a murdered Palestinian teenager on Monday to promise that the attackers would be prosecuted, the government said, as anger over the killing fuelled Arab street protests. The burnt body of 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khudair was discovered in a Jerusalem forest last week. Six Jews have been arrested in what police suspect was a revenge attack for the abduction and killing of three Jewish youths. "I...

JERUSALEM, July 17 (Reuters) - Israel upgraded a college in the occupied West Bank, territory the Palestinians want for a state, to the level of university on Tuesday, a move that critics said was politically motivated. The Ariel University of Samaria's new status will entitle it to more state funding, and some see the move as designed to strengthen Israel's stake in the West Bank, territory it captured along with the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem in 1967. "This...

Chanting "Intifada, Intifada", thousands of furious Palestinians called for a new uprising against Israel during the funeral on Friday of a teen they believe was kidnapped and killed by far-right Jews. Stones thrown at Israeli police were met by teargas, stun grenades and rubber bullets in one of the most highly charged displays of enmity in Jerusalem in years as the body of Mohammed Abu Khudair, 16, wrapped in a Palestinian flag, was carried through his neighborhood...

Tension between Palestinian factions exploded in their worst violence in nearly two years as a paramilitary police raid in the West Bank left six people dead Sunday. The clash underscored the risks for the Palestinian Authority as it moves forcefully, with fresh encouragement from President Barack Obama, to disarm militants intent on attacking Israel. Hamas, the Islamic group that governs the Gaza Strip, said the clampdown on one of its armed cells would bring "tough and harsh reprisal" against...

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel on Wednesday demolished the home of a Palestinian, Ziad Awad, arrested this month on charges of shooting dead an off-duty police officer April, the army said. Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Lerner, an army spokesman said the demolition was intended to serve as a deterrent. "The implementation of the demolition order serves to deter and conveys a severe warning to terrorists and their accomplices that their actions will...

JERUSALEM, July 27 (Reuters) - Israel's Supreme Court on Friday granted a government request to delay the eviction of the largest illegal settler outpost in the occupied West Bank. The court had previously ruled the outpost, Migron, was built on privately owned Palestinian land and had ordered the government to remove it by August 1. Friday's ruling extended the deadline to August 21. The government told the court on Sunday that the temporary site set up for...

Three teenage boys disappear without a trace, apparently while hitchhiking. If this happened somewhere in the Midwest, it would be an agonizing mystery and a police matter. Shift the incident to the Mideast, and you have a far more complex and dangerous political drama. Three Israeli students - a 19-year-old and two 16-year-olds, one of whom has dual Israeli-American citizenship - were last seen June 12 in the West Bank, heading home from school. They are believed to have been hitchhiking, or ...

* Palestinians dispute settler claim of Hebron purchase * Settlers, a key constituency for PM, rankle at policy By Dan Williams JERUSALEM, April 3 (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu overruled the planned eviction on Tuesday of Jewish settlers from a building in an occupied West Bank city that is flashpoint of tensions with Palestinians. Some 20 settlers moved into the Hebron building last Thursday at night, seeking to expand a...

By Ali Sawafta RAMALLAH West Bank (Reuters) - Israel sent more troops to the occupied West Bank on Saturday to search for three missing teenagers it says were abducted by Palestinian Islamist group Hamas. The army said it had also arrested another 10 Palestinians during its hunt - the latest in a series of detentions and raids that have raised tensions and triggered street clashes in the West Bank. Hamas, which refuses to recognise Israel's existence, has neither...

By Gregory Blachier PARIS (Reuters) - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will prevent any uprising in the occupied West Bank despite escalating tensions with Israel, his foreign minister said on Friday. Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad al-Malki told Reuters that a massive Israeli military sweep following the disappearance of three Jewish youths a week ago were unacceptable, but said Abbas would continue assisting Israel in an effort to end the crisis. "We...

Defenders of President Obama's release of five Taliban terrorists from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba in exchange for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl cite as justification Israel's history of swapping hundreds of Palestinian prisoners for one or two Israel soldiers. As strong an ally and example of democracy as Israel is, especially in a region sorely lacking in either, Israel is not the United States. Israel has its own interests and purpose for its actions. The world looks to the United States for...